


fairytale

by sayomiya



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, M/M, if you don't understand it it's fine i don't either, natsumugi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 17:17:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15296298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sayomiya/pseuds/sayomiya
Summary: One day, they'll reach their happy ending too.(A study of Natsume and Tsumugi's relationship and how they learn about love.)





	fairytale

**Author's Note:**

> so i have no idea where i was going with this fic please bear with me

Natsume has grown up surrounded by fairytales, by endless fantasy and wonder, and through this he learns of dreams.

 

He’s always seen life through myriads of crystal balls, through his mommy’s wise eyes and fickle glimpses of magic, and so he lives as something of a fairytale. 

 

His head has been filled with words that jump to life from creamy pages, with colourful illustrations having the same allure as the shine of one of his mother’s trinkets—and so, Natsume’s never quite been in the same world as any child his age.

 

Natsume lives in a dream; he lives in a fairytale.

 

—

 

Tsumugi knows the harsh reality of life all too well. After all, he’s hit rock bottom at an age disproportional to his amount of bad luck, and his life seems to be turning into a pickaxe at this point.

 

If fairytales exist, either he’s a villain or not in one of them at all—there are no soft edges and happy endings for him to enjoy. There is only cold, hard logic that grounds him again and again, and he peers into the world through lenses that, unlike his glasses, are crystal clear in a way that peels off all the layers of the earth until its ugliest, rawest state is left behind.

 

It’s almost startling. He prefers the dirty state of his thick glasses, with a prescription that doesn’t quite match his eyesight, and he settles for the amulets and foolish items that he collects to smudge the glass of the world a little.

 

Tsumugi lives in reality.

 

—

 

Somehow, the roles switch a little along the way.

 

Though Natsume hears tales of Belle and how she’d broken the spell on the Beast with a magic his mother never taught him; though he learns of Snow White and the fated kiss that breaks her stepmother’s curse—he doesn’t get any of it. He appreciates the finely woven words, the tale that brings itself to a spectacular end, but—

 

What is _love?_

 

He doesn’t know the answer to the question. He loves his mother, and he loves fortune telling, but he has a feeling that it’s not the same thing as what the books talk about.

 

Natsume has sped through life on a sled with no control. There has been no time for love; he has been learning, learning, learning—and now he dwindles at the edge of “humanity”—he laughs, for why do such divides exist?—peering down at the human race with a detached eye and trying to figure out that elusive emotion.

 

And Tsumugi knows nothing more than love. He loves foolishly, blindly—he loves whatever he can lay his hands on.

 

He’s no Cinderella; doesn’t have a happy ending and a way to break the anguish like the princess, and he feels more like Ariel when she’d lost her voice most of the time. Love is the only thing he has and the only thing he carries with him—he loves everything; loves everyone, and people tell him that it’ll be his downfall someday.

 

But Tsumugi doesn’t care, because without love, his life would hold no meaning.

 

So he tosses out the word like it’s nothing, and loves over and over again until the emotion has long lost it’s meaning.

 

—

 

They’re on opposite sides of the battlefields. It’s obvious that they won't get along.

 

Natsume doesn’t hate him right off the bat. Sure, Tsumugi’s annoying and kind of pushy—anyone who interrupts him when he’s performing a spell doesn’t leave the best first impression on him—and clumsy enough to be amusing, but he’s interesting enough for him to let it go.

 

Tsumugi grows boring after a while. He learns that he can be read like an open book, and for some reason, he’s so persistent on bringing up the past that Natsume tries so hard to bury, and most of all—

 

Most of all, he sides with a demon that has reduced him and the rest of the Five Oddballs to ashes.

 

_That_ is something he can never forgive him for.

 

There’s another reason why the third-year irks him, beyond the events of Yumenosaki’s famous war and beyond the brief moment the fingers of their pasts had intertwined.

 

He hates how Tsumugi is able to just throw around _love._ He speaks as if he understands it, but he doesn’t—Tsumugi’s just as lost as Natsume is. Natsume won’t allow him to stain such a pure, complicated word, because love has a far deeper meaning than either of them could ever hope to unearth.

 

Beneath the network of double meanings and sonnets poets have slaved over, there’s a certain special meaning of love that he yearns to know of, and he despises how Tsumugi tramples over all of that as if it doesn’t mean anything to him.

 

—

 

Tsumugi doesn’t know how to explain to Natsume, to anyone, that he needs to love—that he needs to _be_ loved, and if he can’t, then he’s better off dead. That’s why he lets the Student Council step all over him, and why he clings to Eichi as if he’d drown otherwise.

 

He has no opinions of anything, for he doesn’t quite understand how emotions work, and his heart has always been a little bit lopsided since the beginning.

 

So he lets Eichi guide him by the nose, and throws his entire being into whatever scheme he’s cooked up. It’s not like he would have any other use for his deadweight body otherwise. It’s not like he’d _care_ about the consequences.

 

Eichi is kind and smart and opinionated, and carries around a certain grace that makes him inclined to lower his head to him. He’s everything Tsumugi cannot be, so he gives his heart to him without a second thought and believes that if it’s Eichi, everything will work out fine.

 

When he runs into Natsume by accident, he doesn’t have an opinion of him at first.

 

Everything he knows are all facts; tidbits of information—things that he know are correct without a doubt. He exchanges small talk with his junior and thinks he’s a good person, but that’s all he can do by himself.

 

Perhaps that’s why he has the heart to trample over Natsume’s dreams and look him in the eye as he does so. Perhaps that’s why Eichi had wanted him on his side in the first place.

 

By the end of the war, when _fine_ is nothing but the wrinkled pieces of an old, torn contract, Eichi is far, far away and he’s long forgotten about untalented, boring Tsumugi.

 

If, one day, Eichi’s dreams can still come true, it would still be alright.

 

But what about him? What did he want?

 

Tsumugi continues to love.

 

—

 

For some reason, they form a unit together.

 

Sora is the glue that holds them together, a beacon of light that shines ahead, and it casts a shadow on the murky, bloodied bodies of the past, as if wanting them to forget that it ever happened.

 

But they can never forget.

 

—

 

The night is perfectly still outside.

 

All the other students have long gone home, perhaps with the exception of Rei, who has taken a liking to sleeping in the coffin that always rests in the Light Music Club. 

 

The breeze is cold on their faces, and the air tastes sweet despite the licks of flames and the smoke that rises up before their eyes, and they watch in tandem at the last traces of evidence that last year’s wounds were real disappears.

 

The smoke carries memories; carries tales of a battle heavy with death and carnage, and yet it burns in a matter of minutes.

 

“It’s your faULT, you knOW.” Natsume speaks, punctuating the silence with a sharp breath. “I’ll never forgive you, even if you apologise to my dead boDY.”

 

Tsumugi glances at the ground.

 

“I know.”

 

And somehow, that’s enough for both of them.

 

Apologies won’t cut it. There are scars that run deeper than the surface of their skin, and if they can’t say it out loud, they’ll just have to accept that deep down, they’ve long come to terms with everything.

 

Grudges can’t be bore forever. The world will still keep moving with or without them, and they’ll have to run to keep up if they were too slow.

 

Beneath the harsh words and the eccentric conversations they have, Natsume learns something that night, when he allows himself to fall asleep in the same room as Tsumugi.

 

Even if this was just a semblance of it, perhaps this was what love was.

 

—

 

No matter how convoluted fairytales are, and no matter what the heroes and heroines face, they will always, _always_ have a happy ending.

 

The main characters will always see their future as bleak, and they won’t have the faintest idea where they’ll end up in life, but in the end, they’ll defeat whatever evil or bad guy that’s in their way and forge a path to their happiness themselves.

 

Their fairytale isn’t as straightforward as the one out of children’s books, but if it’s still a fairytale, can they believe in their own happy ending someday?

 

“SeNPAI.” Natsume stares ahead, knowing that Tsumugi is right behind him, because Tsumugi is always right behind him. “When I graduate, and when Sora graduatES—Switch will be refoRMED.”

 

Tsumugi looks at him for a moment and thinks of how far they’ve come. He thinks of how far _he’s_ come, of how the unit has become his reason to live. He’s let go of the old days—maybe he loved Eichi, and he still does, but now he’ll wholeheartedly be able to say that he loves Switch.

 

He knows that if it’s Switch, he’ll be able to find happiness someday too.

 

“Of course, Natsume-kun. After all, I love both of you.”

 

Natsume continues staring into the sky, but a ghost of a smile dances across his face.

 

One day, he’ll be able to admit that he loves Tsumugi too.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> wow that was wild
> 
> anyway hope you enjoyed!!


End file.
